sportsman would feed his bird and train it daily, and in an old book
of directions he is advised "at night to go to the mews, and take it
from its perch, and set it on his fist, and bear it all the night,"
in order to be ready for the morrow's sport.

[Illustration: A FALCONER.]

The mews were the buildings where the hawks were kept when moulting,
the word "mew" being a term used by falconers to signify to moult,
or cast feathers; and the King's Mews, near Charing Cross, was the
place where the royal hawks were kept. This place was afterwards
enlarged, and converted into stables for horses; but the old name
remained, and now most stables in London are called mews, although
the word is derived from falconry, and the hawks have long since
flown away.

The sport declined at the end of the seventeenth century, when
shooting with guns became general, but our language has preserved
some traces of this ancient pastime. When a person is blinded by
deceit, he is said to be "hoodwinked," and this word is derived from
the custom of placing a hood over the hawk's eyes before it was
released from restraint.

On the Feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas, the tenants were in the
habit of bringing presents of a fat goose to their landlord, in
order to make him kind and lenient in the matters of rent, repairs,
and the renewal of leases, and the noble landlords used to entertain
their tenants right royally in the great halls of their ancestral
mansions, roast goose forming a standing dish of the repast. This is
probably the origin of the custom which prevails at the present time